Cantor: Time to break up the MTA

We get that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority needs more money to balance its billion-dollar-plus budget deficit. If it wasn’t the 23 percent subway fare increase they threatened, it certainly was the $2 toll for the East River bridges. But the nagging question is to what extent all that the money is needed.

The angst over MTA management capabilities is real. First it is their thirst for revenue that has led to numerous subway, bus and commuter fare increases. Also, a short while ago the MTA board squandered a billion-dollar surplus, rather than saving the surplus for the deficit they should have known was coming. This inconsistent management is not instilling confidence in taxpayers, commuters and Albany legislators. Jack Welch, the master manager who steered General Electric to record growth, said that good managers “can see around corners” for problems that might materialize. You wonder what he would say about how the MTA board wasted a surplus.

So now, when Albany signals it will not bail out the MTA, the threats of raising fares are back. Some city-based state legislators have already called for reinstatement of the commuter tax, which drains suburbia. With all this fiscal confusion, the one thing we don’t hear about is how the MTA will change the way it operates. There is no talk about trimming costs, getting leaner, meaner and more efficient. Some even have called for an audit of the MTA’s books just to see what’s going on there.

You would think that when you are chronically losing money, like the MTA seems to do, MTA management would seriously consider its structure. Could it be that it is just too big to manage and costs too much to operate? The time seems right to break up the MTA. It may have once been wise to create an overriding transportation agency to run the Long Island Rail Road, the New York City transit system and Metro-North. But that was then and this is now.

We all understand the concept of regionalizing mass transit, but when New York City is involved, regionalization means what’s good for the city is good for the region. That may be so under some circumstances, but not in this case.

It is 100% correct that the MTA must be broken up and they’re books are not audited every year.

There priorities are audited even less often

The MTA has bit off more than we can afford and doesn’t need my bridges. It needs to scale back its plans and restrict its programs to projects that NYC can afford.

Since it doesn’t come under anyones jurisdiction, it won’t do that. Instead to uses the agency for pork barrel politics around the region and picks on the weakest hand in its grip, the outer boroughs of NYC, to exploit for its own unneeded agenda.

It doesn’t need a 15.2 billion dollar east side access program for the LIRR. Scratch that off the list, and the Fulton Street program and the pork west side extension that was traded for a westside stadium project, and the MTA has a surplus.

I know Marty. Marty is thoughtful. Marty usually has good ideas. But, this time, Marty has advanced a pretty dumb idea. Why do we have the the MTA? Because a lot of privately owned public transit entities in the New York area went bust about 45 years or so ago. Why did they go bust? Because the regulators that regulated them would not allow the rates charged for freight and passenger services to keep pace with operating and capital costs. Why is the MTA in a fix? Need I quote Mr. Berra about Deja Vue all over again? If we bust up the MTA now, who foots the bill for running the balkanized entities? Who? Look back in the records and one will find that some 30 years ago the late State Sentor John D. Caemmerer advanced the idea of a regional tax in the Tri-State area to help fund public transit systems. It seems that once again what was old is new again. Marty’s OpEd may make good copy and fill space, but it’s bad public policy for mass transit.

Please read my book “The Gravy Train – An Inside Look at the LIRR” for a first hand account of waste and mismanagement. My book is available on Amazon.com

I’m an former LIRR employee who was very “impressed” with the operation. As an employee I was an internal critic of this boondoogle and my candor would cost me my job.

An audit is useless if the money being accounted for is sqauandered away.

Where do we begin:

1. Employees who work 15% of their workday – a documented fact by more than one source.

2. Salaries more than double that of comparable positions in the private sector.

3. Gross overstaffing – more than double the number of employees actually required if they worked a reasonable day.

4. Overtime that is not justified yet doled out to appease the unions.

5. Outdated workrules – often requiring several union crafts to perform a simple task a single trade could perform.

6. Rampant neopotism on the LIRR – No entry level qualification process. There is no Civil Service type selction based on a level playing field. Employees are hired based on their family tree – not their skill levels.

7. Management that fails to extract basic job performed from their employees. With gross overstaffing and generous overtime their is no incentive for management demand basic employee perfomance.

8. An operation that is inundated with consultants – many of whom are ex-employess and were non-contributors when employed by the MTA.

9. Over generous benefits including the retirement package.

10. Employees who are deliberately given excessive overtime during their last three years of employment to boost up their retirement package.

11. Free employee transportation on their respective agency during and after their employment.

Most of the above noted issues are spread throughout the MTA. The Transit Authority does hire through a Civil Service type system.

The above noted issues cost taxpayers in this state hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

I’ve sent my book to politicians and have yet to elicit a response.

The high tolls are one of many factors driving the business community from this state.

The MTA remains insulated from the economic realities of our fragile economy.

Clearly, “A commuter” above is part of the PR team at the MTA. Or at least an employee. Honestly, do any of you commuters know any other commuters so enamored of the MTA? Here are the facts: The MTA has continously bled money and is notorious countrywide for its inefficiency! It is a model of bloated bureaucracy and while government on every level has embraced “smaller government” best prcatices and budget cuts the last few years, the MTS has only offered a yearly exercise in “maybe we have the money, maybe we don’t.” But that’s the point, the MTA is no government, nor private. It’s an authority which means it answers to no one, which is never good for efficiency. Accountability is key. In fact, Robert Moses was the originator of the “authority” precisley because he refused to answer to mayors, governors, even presidents. A true monarch and that’s what we’ve been blessed with today. NY State has more than 600 of them. Tasks that are assumed by giovernment and local agencies elsewhere, here have have an authority created. Graft. Graft. Graft.
In the real business world the MTA would have closed its doors long ago. Why is it so impossible a notion that we expect at LEAST minimum accountability from a multi-billion dollar agency?

Also, I’d mention that the bridges, including those designed by Robert Moses were all to eventually become “gifts to the city” and be free once tolls paid off their construction costs. Read up. Instead, it costs more to drive a thousand foot span than it does to have dinner.

Keeping an over-arching organizing commuter agency IS INDEED a good idea and necessary, keeping it a free-wheeling Authority is not. Get real “commuter” and stop wasting the working man’s time. Honestly, save your poorly thought out arguments for the politicians who are in cahoots with your employer.

About the Author

LIBN columnist Martin Cantor is director of the Long Island Center for Socio-Economic Policy and a former Suffolk County economic development commissioner. He can be reached at EcoDev1@aol.com.